Rudyard Kipling, the famous author, was named after Rudyard Lake.

Rudyard lake is an artificial reservoir two miles long and a quarter of a mile wide built in 1831 to feed the Macclesfield canal. Rudyard Kipling was named after the lake as a result of his parents meeting there in 1863.

Rudyard is a small village which is between Stoke-on-Trent and the moorlands town of Leek and is probably most famous for giving its name to Rudyard Kipling. Kipling’s parents fell in love with Rudyard so much during their courtship that they decided to name their son Rudyard. Kipling's father, John Lockwood Kipling, was an artist and scholar who had considerable influence on his son's work, became curator of the Lahore museum, and is described presiding over this “wonder house” in the first chapter of Kim, Rudyard's most famous novel. His mother was Alice Macdonald, two of whose sisters married the highly successful 19th-century painters Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Sir Edward Poynter, while a third married Alfred Baldwin and became the mother of Stanley Baldwin, later prime minister.

These connections were of lifelong importance to Kipling.

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